Pete sat opposite Sylvie on the floor, his back against the corner
of the fireplace, his knees drawn up in his hands, his head a little
bent. He too--from under his long level brows--looked for the most
part at Hugh, not devotedly, not wistfully, but with a somber
wondering. It was only now and then, and as though he couldn't help
it, that the blue, smouldering Northern eyes were turned to Sylvie
on her throne. Then they would brighten painfully, and his lips would
tighten so that the dimple, meant for laughter, cut itself like a
touch of pain into his cheek. The firelight heightened his
picturesqueness--the dull blue of his shirt, open at the round, smooth
throat, the dark gold-brown of his corduroy trousers, against which
the long, tanned hands, knit strongly together, stood out in the rosy,
leaping light--beautifully painted against the background of old brown
logs.
Yet it was Hugh, after all, who dominated the room by right of his
power, his magnetism, the very distortion of his spirit. Here in this
lonely square of light and warmth, surrounded by a world of savage,
lawless winds heightening the voices of vast loneliness, these three
people were imprisoned by him, a Merlin of the West.
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